


Sleeping in the meadow - Sleeping in his heart

by Itohan



Series: To walk amongst the stars (Star Wars AU’s) [20]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Darth Vader Has Issues, Darth Vader Needs a Hug, Dreams, F/M, Guilt, Hurt No Comfort, Memories, Mental Anguish, POV Darth Vader, Past Character Death, Post-Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Reader is Dead, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 09:09:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30019467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Itohan/pseuds/Itohan
Summary: Vader dreams of a world where his wife can forgive him. A world where they can sit together side by side, happily underneath the summer sun.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker/Reader, Darth Vader/Reader
Series: To walk amongst the stars (Star Wars AU’s) [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1759843
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	Sleeping in the meadow - Sleeping in his heart

“I don’t want to wake up from this dream. When I do, you’ll be gone.”

You continued braiding the flowers you’d gathered on your lap into a flower crown. “I am already gone, Anakin. I’ve been gone for a long time.”

“That is not my name anymore.” Vader clenched his fists - both of flesh, both human - seething. 

“It will always be your name, my love.” You offered him a weak smile, your own hands clenching around the flowers, knuckles losing colour. “The one your mother gave you, the name I laid all my love and dreams on. If only this once in this dream, be my Anakin. For me...”

He laughed. Laughed like he hadn’t in the many, so many years since you had died. “It’s my dream and yet you make demands,” he said, shaking his head at your insolence. It was so you wouldn’t see the smile tugging at his lips. “It’s almost as if you were truly here. But I will grant you your wish, even if you are nothing more than another ghost to haunt me. The ghost of my beloved.”

“Do you still love me?”   
Your voice was quiet as if you feared rejection.

He pulled you closer until he was able to press his forehead into yours. Your skin was as soft as he remembered. Your smile was just as kind. You were the same just like you had been before- before he’d killed you and your child. But here... Here he was free, here it hadn’t happened yet. Would never happen.

For a moment he breathes, without pain, without any restrictions, just air. “My love for you is eternal. It shines brighter than any star and will do so until death finally brings me down,” he answered truthfully. There was no existence for him if he didn’t love you. He couldn’t exist without loving you, it wars deeply ingrained within his heart as it it had been planted there from the moment he was born.

“A star that shone too bright.”

The world around him distorted, losing all colour, rotting away into a nightmare. Your hair crusting with blood, face mimicking your last painful grimace as you’d died by his hand, blood dyeing your clothes red. 

Your voice broke out into a shrieking wail, louder than any noise he had ever heard before. He instinctively shrunk back but you wouldn’t let go of him, hands curling into his hair, **ripping** and **tearing**.

“That you drove me this far... You corrupted me, **ANAKIN**! You murdered me, the one you love. You left me to be claimed by death, taking our unborn child with me!”

“No... No! I offered you everything... STOP!”

Vader used the force to lift you out of the tall grass, stopping the onslaught your hands were committing on their own body. You wouldn’t be able to hurt yourself anymore, he’d kept you safe. 

He’d saved you. You weren’t going to die again and if he had to, he’d stay here forever holding you up as long as you wouldn’t die again. He would do it forever because there was no good in a word where you were gone. 

But all slowly all at once he lost the ability to control his body, his limbs, even his breathing. Until finally he was a slave of his own weaknesses once more. Vader couldn’t scream when you tore yourself out of his desperate grip. He couldn’t scream when with a sickening thud you fell to the ground, blood splattering his face. Bones sticking out of your broken form as your body lied a foot length away from him, crushed and leaking deep red blood.

He couldn’t scream.

Your broken neck twisted itself around once again to him. Inhuman. “Face what you have done, Vader. You’ve killed Anakin Skywalker, murdered his wife and unborn child! Pay for your sins, Sith!”

“NO!”

His red lightsaber disappeared into the body, again and again until the wench stopped her cackling. This had never been you. You lied buried in a grave, rotting beneath the ground, forever lost to him. Nothing more than a corpse he had loved once.

The nightmare vanished as fast as it had come, leaving behind only Vader’s loud breathing. Beneath a helmet that should have been a crown wept a monster. A monster that hoped to never dream of his wife again, to forget you and the man he had once been.

**Author's Note:**

> I was going through my writing folder because I am bored, stumbled upon this again and felt like posting it :)
> 
> I think by now it’s fairly obvious that I love making Anakin Skywalker suffer - all incarnations of him.


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